Travel insurance with pre-existing conditions - recommendations needed

V1nny

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I've had a couple of medical scares in the past, but luckily have been fully recovered for years. I am used to paying extra for annual travel insurance but this year my renewal with Wesleyan has almost doubled from £172 to £325 for up to 60 days per trip, limited to European travel only. I have tried AllClear as a specialist insurer for pre-existing conditions but they nearly gave me another heart attack with a quote of £522 for the year, with a maximum holiday duration of just 55 days!!


Has anyone any experience of other insurers that cover pre-existing conditions they could recommend please?
 
I have Nationwide insurance that comes free with the bank account. Then I pay extra to cover the pre-existing conditions. They will do up to 180 days per trip or shorter but with multiple trips. Not sure if is only Europe but I expect it is. Good luck.
 
All CLear seem the choice of most renal patients and seem to enjoy a good reputation. The Post Office also finds a lot of favour but I have no idea on time limits which I suspect is a problem with most insurers if you have a pre existing condition

Channa
 
We use Staysure. After I had bowel cancer I had trouble finding people to cover us.

The drill is that you have to be meticulous about disclosing conditions, or even a trip to the doc where nothing is found - the advice is to notify them of any interaction. If you happen to be mid way through an investigation cycle for a new problem they will exclude things possibly related until investigations are finished. Then in our experience they’ll simply add whatever it was to the list of things you’ve told them about.

Two snags: it’s incredibly long winded because as well as dealing with what you’ve just disclosed they insist on going over all previously disclosed things as well. The other snag is even if there’s no change in premium, they charge an amendment fee, even if it’s adding something like ‘suspected virus, now fixed, no medication’

But they do cover us, so it’s worth a bit of pain....
 
Robina said:
I have Nationwide insurance that comes free with the bank account. Then I pay extra to cover the pre-existing conditions. They will do up to 180 days per trip or shorter but with multiple trips. Not sure if is only Europe but I expect it is. Good luck.
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Another vote for Nationwide. Both Mr and I have pre-existing conditions (I actually didn't think we pay more or them but we do pay an extra for longer trips). You also get breakdown cover which includes the van, abroad as well as uk, and several other things. I think the account costs £13 a month but we get interest of about £4 a month so net cost is £108 which is great value.
 
If you belong to Caravan & Motorhome club or Camping and Caravaning Club do try them, I was charged £11.00 hor 5 months with a heart condition, now resolved.
 
Jo001 said:
Another vote for Nationwide. Both Mr and I have pre-existing conditions (I actually didn't think we pay more or them but we do pay an extra for longer trips). You also get breakdown cover which includes the van, abroad as well as uk, and several other things. I think the account costs £13 a month but we get interest of about £4 a month so net cost is £108 which is great value.
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I second that - also get coverage for mobile phones (both mine and wife's). I think we paid about £150 last year to cover trips up to 90 days and world wide coverage, pre-existing medical conditions included.

Mike
 
My sister recommended a company called Insurewith.com and they won't offer me an annual multi-trip policy, but they did offer single trip cover for just short of 10 weeks for about £240, but it covers medical expenses only, with a £75 excess, rising to £775 excess if the claim relates to any of my declared pre-existing conditions.

The Wesleyan renewal quote is starting to look almost reasonable, but before I decide, I am going to contact all the companies kindly recommended by my fellow members on this and the Motorhomer forums since I requested help on Thursday.
 
colinmd said:
Try Insurance Surgery.
Travel Insurance >> The Insurance Surgery
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Thank you colinmd, for this recommendation.

I started off doing an online quote with The Insurance Surgery but a message popped up telling me to call them and speak to an adviser, who took all my complicated details and came up with a range of quotations starting at £698 with a £50 excess. After much discussion I decided I don't need £15million medical cover, nor baggage or cancellation cover, and this reduced the premium to £415 for £10million medical with £100 excess.

Going in the right direction, but still room for maneuvre I hoped. The quote was for an annual policy with maximum trip duration of 93 days. I was thinking of going away for up to 65 days. If I change my plans to a maximum duration of 61 days the premium drops to £216. (By the way, a single trip insurance for 61 days was more expensive than the same cover on the annual policy)

So to summarise, by dropping medical cover from £15million to £10million, holiday duration from 65 days to 61 days, and excluding cancellation cover (I can only lose the cost of a channel crossing) and baggage cover (it can't get lost when its in the motorhome), I was able to cut the premium by almost 70% from the highest quote but more importantly it saves £109 on my renewal quote.

Once again this community has come to the rescue. It is great to have the resources of such wide and varied knowledge and shared experiences. Thank you to everyone who contributed. It has been much appreciated.



P.S. For anyone else with pre-existing medical conditions who have been following this thread, it would appear that the best choice of insurance provider can vary due to many factors such as age and medical condition and there isn't one company that's best for everyone. Nationwide seems a very good option but they wouldn't cover me. Allclear are highly rated but I found them very expensive. Wesleyan are very good but not competitive on price for me this year. I didn't try Staysure because the administration seems to onerous. It definitely pays to shop around especially when an annual policy comes up for renewal.
 
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